Haiti is one of the poorest and most under developed countries in the world. I suppose that is not a big surprise when you consider its history. It seems that Haiti has always been dealing with one crisis or another — be it humanitarian, political or natural disaster. As I am sure you have heard on the news, the latest crisis to rattle this poor island nation, was the massive earthquake from last week and subsequent aftershock early this week that shook Haiti’s capital. These earthquakes have leveled Haiti’s presidential palace, taking with it Haiti’s government. It trashed a dozens of hospitals,  buried hundreds alive in rubble and wiped out hundreds of thousands of homes. What was left of Haiti’s already diminished resources is now also largely gone. Haiti has been through hard times, but its never needed everyones help like it does today.

Like much of the world, the hosting community, normally comprised of ultra competitive rivals, has really come together in doing what they can by launching HostingForHaiti.com. This is a joint effort between Peer1 Hosting, GoGrid, ThePlanet, Rackspace, VPS.Net, ServInt, and SingleHop, with many more web hosting providers joining.

In addition to joining and promoting the HostingForHaiti program, SingleHop has made a donation of $10,000 to the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund.

In the immediate aftermath of the earthquakes, President Obama asked former-presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush to start a foundation to raise funds for the Haitian people. The foundation, called the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, was launched just three days after the earthquakes shook the country. To date, the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund has collected over 100,000 individual donations. The funds very simple purpose is to “assist the people of Haiti as they rebuild their lives,” a mission that SingleHop supports and believes in.

While there are loads of great organizations out there to donate to, we picked the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund because 100% of the donations received go directly to relief efforts. In addition, SingleHop will be matching employee contributions to any charitable organizations.

If you’re interested in donating, visit http://www.clintonbushhaitifund.org.

After several months of planning, and a number of very late nights from the dedicated staff at SingleHop, we’re happy to announce the expansion of our footprint in the Chicagoland area! The initial phase of this expansion includes space for over 2,000 servers, which we plan to grow to 10,000 servers in the facility.

Highlights:

-Building environmentals provided by DuPont Fabros Technology (www.dft.com), with insuite services provided by ServerCentral.

-Onsite, 24×7 SingleHop NOC

-N+2 redundancy on critical systems, minimum N+1 on all systems

-HVAC, parallel electrical bus feeds

-Rotary UPS power systems each with 1300KW of critical output (n+2)

-16x 2,2500 KW capacity Diesel Generators (n+2)

-10,000 square feet of raised flooring

-Laser-based Very Early Smoke Detection (VESDA)

-500,000 gallon thermal storage (chilled water) for emergency cooling if needed.

-2 Utility Feeders

-8 Power Transformers

-100,000 Gallons of diesel

As part of our set-up, we have provisioned a diverse ring back to our downtown Chicago facility to be used for private network use, as well as 10-gigabyte circuits from nLayer. SingleHop clients located in our downtown facility will immediately be able to securely transfer data across the network, between the two facilities. The facilities are also located 30 miles apart, intended to suit clients disaster recovery needs.

As you can imagine, we’re excited to have opened this chapter in our company’s history. Over the past year we have grown exponentially, 673% growth in 2008, and 400% growth in Q1 09 over Q1 08. I largely attribute these kind of results to the high standards we set out to achieve. The selection of this facility is a continuation of those high-standards, featuring more redundancy than any of our competitors, as well as a 100% Power SLA that will be extended to clients in the coming weeks.

We are determined for our growth to always benefit our customers; as such, we are very excited to continue serving you through this new facility.  Thanks for your business!
Best,

Zak Boca

To read the Official Press Release: www.singlehop.com/about/press/
To view images of the datacenter: www.singlehop.com/datacenter/

Dear SingleHop Clients –

As you look more into SingleHop, you will find that we focus on being extremely transparent on all fronts. This means that during the bad times, downtime or any other form of service interruption, you can be sure that we’ll communicate as openly as possible and with as much detail as possible. It also means that when positive things happen, you probably won’t hear the end of it!

With that said, I am absolutely thrilled to announce our Q1 2009 results. During the first quarter of this year, we recorded growth of over 400% when compared against the same period in 2008. This equates to over 1,000 dedicated servers provisioned, and 500 of these servers were sold in 1 month!

What’s interesting is that during this period we didn’t increase our advertising spending, and our ARPU (average revenues per user) stayed consistent with past periods.

These are fantastic results which we attribute largely to increased accessibility for our clients, as well as increases across the board in the quality of service that we’re providing. Both factors increased our word of mouth referral business (thank you!), and our overall website conversion rate.

Here are some hard numbers to show you exactly what has improved.

• We have invested $250,000 in a massive network overhaul without adding any cost to clients.

• Server provisioning time was reduced from 57 minutes to 27 minutes, on average.

• Phone hold times were reduced from 2 minutes to 30 seconds, again on average.

• Technical support ticket response times also dropped from an average of 17 minutes to 9 minutes.

• Sales department hours have been expanded from M-F 9am-5PM CST to M-F 8am-10pm.

Beyond the numbers, which you’ll find are equally important at our company.

During this quarter, we have also launched a number of new features, including our Private Network, which enables remote, secure administration of servers, and our Server Bailout System, this last one enables remote troubleshooting and repair of servers in a powerful, multiplatform rescue environment. Both existing customers and new customers can take advantage of these powerful new features free of charge.

Additionally, we launched one of the most exciting extensions to our LEAP server control platform- LEAPMobile. This offering gives our customers remote control from the road, on an array of devices of our customers choosing. And, in recognition of Murphy’s Law, launched 100% free priority support for tickets submitted through LEAPmobile. Priority support guarantees an ultra-fast response time of less than 15 minutes.

The numbers and events highlighted above are especially impressive when put into the context of the prevailing economic environment. While other companies are cutting costs, at SingleHop we keep charging forward. Our employee growth is yet another sign of this relentless move ahead. In this same period, we have welcomed to the company several key individuals. We now count on a new CFO, a VP of Communications (Daniel Salcedo- Twitter), two more sales personnel and a new Senior Network Engineer. Also, we have added more systems developers to help with our ever-growing need for high-quality code. During this same time period, we have decreased hold times by adding several new employees to our NOC team.

Now that I have covered the last three months, let me give you some insight into what’s coming next. In Q2 2009 we’ll be opening a new Chicago data center location, as well as adding more ways for clients to maintain control over servers hosted with SingleHop. The launch of LEAPWebTop & LEAPMobile was a start, on our extended journey of empowering our clients and creating more, faster, and easier ways to control their servers. You can be sure that if you’re a SingleHop client, we’ll empower you with a great deal of tools- if we can automate it and extend it to you, we will! I personally welcome you to visit our offices, you will see all the people who make SingleHop a great company, and the metrics spread throughout our workplace, which challenge us to achieve more.

All in all, we have enjoyed a very strong quarter, both fiscally and otherwise. Here’s a big “hip-hip-hooray” for many more of the same, and we can’t thank you enough for being a client. Great work to all SingleHop employees!

The best,

Zak Boca

President & CEO
Follow me on Twitter- @zakboca

We’re happy to announce that today we’re launching SingleHop.mobi, our first (but giant!) step in to mobile management for your dedicated server. Features include server rebooting, bandwidth graphs, managing billing, submitting tickets and replying and more.

Not to worry, we’ll be supporting most phones very soon, and we hope that you enjoy this first version (and beta).

As you know, our company has always had a firm commitment to providing the most power-efficient servers, without sacrificing performance, which is why we’re excited to announce the Intel Dual-Core Atom server, and to be the very first company to do so.

The Intel Dual-Core Atom Server is faster than a Pentium-4, and much more efficient. Dual-Core, Hyperthreading processor, and it uses 75% less power than a Pentium-4. What makes this particularly exciting is that because of it’s extremely low power usage, we’re able to pass the savings to clients, and offer the server at only $99 per month.

Obviously with an offer such as this, we’re expecting an overwhelming response. We have hundreds of servers ready to go though, and we’ll aim to provision your server within an hour, as you’ve come to expect from our company.

This is an exciting announcement, but don’t delay and miss your opportunity to pick up this great machine

Click here to view details

Google announced it’s anticipated browser, Google Chome, yesterday, and then quickly pulled it offline. Today they finally released it, and we were all anxious to try it out. Our developers of course, were anxious to see how it rendered LEAP. (screenshot attached below)

We were all very impressed with how fast Chrome rendered LEAP. Windows inside of LEAP can be manipulated quite a bit faster, and this appears to be exactly what Google was trying to accomplish (well, one of the items). The key takeaway from the launch is that Google has engineered Chrome for how people use the Web in 2008, which is to run applications like Google Docs, Gmail, and LEAP.

To accomplish this, Google built a new javascript engined dubbed V8 that is specifically designed for better performance of these applications, which is consistent with Googles take (and many others) on how software will be managed through browsers.

I’m personally impressed with Chrome. I’m an OSX guy, so I was a little discouraged to see that Google only released the Windows version, though there is plenty of reasoning behind that. Priorities..

Hardware is constantly outdated which, normally, presents a big problem for dedicated hosting clients. You get a server today and in 6 months your provider will naturally be offering a replacement of your server for new clients- with bigger and better stuff.

While we can’t entirely solving that problem, we decided recently to begin only offering a minimum of 2GB of RAM on new servers. To show our commitment to our very loyal clients, we are providing a free RAM upgrade to bring each and every client to 2GB of RAM.

As far as we know, this is the first time a hosting provider has gone back and mass upgraded it’s clientèle on this level. Here’s the bottom-line impact and the reason providers don’t normally do this:

1,200+ servers potentially impacted (We feel in the area of 50% of these effected).
We’re also going to be reducing approximately 20% of our customers bills that pay for 2GB of RAM.
In all, over the course of a year, hardware expense and loss of revenue: Well over $100,000.

Sounds meek, right? To an accountant it might not be the best move, but our business is experiencing exponential growth. That’s largely based on our very loyal clients and reduced advertising costs because so many of you are talking positively about our services on various forums and websites. We’re showing our appreciation for your business and we would love to hear your feedback to this giveaway, or feedback on our services!

With the announcement of LEAP, we’ve had some extremely exciting times at the company. That’s going to get better with more announcements next week as we continue to pass up the competition in terms of new features and services all aimed at giving you more control over your infrastructure and done at affordable prices. (or in this case, an upgrade for free!)

Overall, we’re happy to be in the position to do it, and we hope that you appreciate the efforts and service that you receive from SingleHop.

To take advantage as an existing client, go here: http://www.singlehop.com/servers/free_ram_upgrade_offer.php

This isn’t exclusively for dedicated servers, the web hosting industry. In fact, the idea of giving something to get something back has gone on for a lot longer than anyone reading this has been around, but it’s just as effective today.

What got me going on this is a book that Dan Ushman recommended to me- The Psychology of Influence, which is a good read. The author writes the book based on what’s influenced him toward making a decision in the past. One point that I really took note of was the idea that when you give something, the person receiving will have a sense of loyalty to return something to you.

If you think about it, we run into real world examples all of the time. You’re at the grocery store, you take a sample and the smiling person says “How do you like it?” She doesn’t tell you how much better it is than everything is, she doesn’t offer you a coupon, etc. Perhaps without knowing, she’s reminding you that you were just given something. I don’t know how many times I’ve ended up at a checkout counter buying some new natural juice that I’ll likely never drink, or liked very much.
Survey companies have also really taken this up a notch by sending surveys with a dollar. Just a dollar, and the response rate goes through the roof because recipients feel that they shouldn’t take the dollar without doing something- oh, how about sending back a survey, yes?

At our company, while we LOVE all of our customers, the most profitable are those that buy managed web hosting services from us. We like to find ways to let our current clients, and anyone else, see how talented our technicians are and how much there is to benefit from our managed services. It’s not something that we learned from a psychology book- it’s more of looking at simple karma in business. At times, our very talented technicians have a bit of downtime, so we have them seek out people needing assistance. One benefit that I’m sure we’re seeing, according to this book, is the internal programming that some of us have in wanting to reciprocate.

I found this interesting, and maybe you’ll find a way to apply the thinking to your business. Share some knowledge, or give something away. If the psychology stuff is all wrong then, if nothing else, you might be due for some good karma.

This is a touchy subject, which is why you won’t likely find many dedicated hosting company managers and owners openly addressing this topic, instead instructing their sales reps to find ways to jump around the subject. Our take is that it’s common sense, and therefore no reason to avoid the topic!

If you follow the industry at all, have servers elsewhere, read Web Hosting Talk, otherwise stay ‘in the know’, then you’ve likely seen some of our competitors increasing prices retroactively for all their clients. I won’t bother to mention names, but some of the price increases have been as high as $30 a month on a $100 per month server – 30% per month. Each and every price increase, from what I can tell, are direct results of rising energy costs. Just like almost every other business, hosting is very much affected by rising energy costs. That said, there are some things that clients should be aware of, and be protected from 30%~ increases:

First, some of the price increases that I’ve seen are excessive. I don’t doubt the legitimacy of the need to increase prices to cover costs and these businesses, I’m sure, are well aware of the negative PR that will arise (and has!). But, as a business owner, that is the absolute last thing that I would ever want to do. So, the price increases were likely legitimate, but poor planning and playing with fire, is what I say!

These companies are largely using commodity hardware — old and cheap hardware that isn’t at all power-efficient (but it’s cheap!) This leaves the companies severely exposed- rising electricity costs ($), infrastructure upgrades (more $) and, of course, depleting margins. Who picks up the tab? You guessed it.

Here’s what you will hopefully take away from this.

a) Avoid companies that offer a price-lock to every customer. While it sounds great on the surface, think about the economics at play here. Hosting companies, especially dedicated hosting firms, have to pay big electricity bills each month. I’m not an economist, but I know that energy prices are highly unpredictable (given today’s gas prices, who doesn’t?)

With that said, we have *never* raised our prices and we have absolutely no intention, or need to, raise them today, or the foreseeable future. If electricity prices quadruple next month, we would obviously have to address this, but we have some protection from that. A company offering a price-lock indefinitely is playing with fire, because you can’t always guarantee that electricity rates won’t continue to increase at the rate that they have. Have a look here- http://news.google.com/news?q=electricity%20rates%20increase%20this%20year&ie=UTF-8&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&sa=N&tab=wn

The headlines:
FPL seeks 16 percent rate increase
Are you up to speed… electric rate increases
PUC approves electricity hike
OG&E to ask for rate hike
Pay more for power? I&M electric pursues a 14-percent rate increase
City feels utility rates will rise

… you get the point… Just today, a lot of hosting providers costs just went up! I don’t care where you are- Colorado, Kentucky, California (who are you kidding), it doesn’t matter. Electricity rates are going up!)

b) Along with this, it’s just generally wise to avoid hosting on inefficient hardware. Here are the numbers – our servers use HALF of the power that many of our competitors’ servers use. This means a smaller electricity bill, less strain on our infrastructure (read: less chance of outages/possibility of large issues) and, subsequently, we’ll (you’ll) get more from our infrastructure.

Not to mention that warm fuzzy feeling you’ll have by being more environmentally friendly

Really though- if you have one server and your provider has been using garbage hardware and they increase your price on your server, it probably won’t be the end of the world. You’ll end up paying more and you’ll, of course, have the opportunity to move to a company better prepared. The people that are really in a bind are those with hundreds of servers that just had their margins squeezed dry. Don’t get caught in that situation- June is a great time to move to SingleHop because we’re not only locking in your price (only those that sign up in June) and providing a $200 credit if you transfer from a competitor, but we’ll also guarantee that you’ll be on a much more power-efficient server, with a company better prepared for wherever energy rates might go!

I previously owned midPhase shared hosting, founded it in 2003 and it was successfully acquired in 2007. We started the business with little capital, and we knew from day one that we wanted our core business to be shared hosting, so that’s all that we focused on. Aside from that, we didn’t have the capital or the resources to provide dedicated hosting when we knew that there was a great market for it. I’m sure a large portion of existing SingleHop clients that read this will have heard of midPhase, because such a large portion of our client base was previously a midPhase customer! Looking back though, I wish that we had the resources or the ability to offer servers sooner than we did, but we decided to simply not bother with it. Don’t make that same mistake, that if you can’t afford servers you simply won’t offer them. There can be a middle ground, and that’s reselling dedicated servers.

We’re working hard right now to have a reseller control panel out very soon, and shared hosting companies will clearly play a big role in it’s success. As we develop the reseller system we’ll have a unique perspective having owned and operated a large shared hosting company myself. We are already working with some shared hosting companies, names that we’ll soon announce, so if you are interested, fill out our partners form here- http://www.singlehop.com/partners/index.php

I was always keen to getting in to dedicated hosting, because shared hosting was so successful, and some portion of those clients will inevitably grow and need something larger. Offering dedicated servers can diversify your product line very easily- even if you only provide as an upgrade path for clients that need a server. Either you give them the option, or they’ll go to someone that will, so why not have it available? You’re losing revenue if you don’t.